Posts Tagged ‘Anti Semitism’

Canadian government leaders are converging to condemn an anti-Semitic attack late Monday night by vandals in a garage beneath an apartment building in a Jewish neighborhood of Montreal.

Five vehicles were marked with giant swastikas in red paint on the hoods, and each was the recipient of a white envelope bearing a matching swastika, containing a bullet and a threatening note.

B’nai Brith Canada called the incident, which occurred on Côte St. Luc Road, “extremely serious” and said it goes beyond simple vandalism.

“You’re not dealing with a bunch of individuals who had a can of spray paint … These guys or girls planned this. They specifically set out with bullets in their pockets, with envelopes, with notes and obviously with spray paint,” said Steven Slimovitch, B’nai Brith Canada’s national legal counsel.

The Quebec government condemned the incident and Immigration, Diversity and Inclusion Minister Kathleen Weil issued a statement saying, “These hateful and racist acts are unacceptable. They do not reflect in any way the values of Quebec society and do not have a place in our society which is inclusive and open to diversity.

“We cannot denounce these only as acts of vandalism,” she continued. “They reflect prejudice and intolerance. I wish to reassure the public that we will not accept that Quebecers be subjected to threats on account of their origin or their religious beliefs.”

Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre also denounced the incidence, saying that he was “staggered” to see that “such acts could be committed toward the Jewish community.” Montreal, he said, is a “welcoming city” where all religions “must be able to live together harmoniously.

“Montrealers must denounce any such acts, whatever community is targeted. As for me, I say it loud and strong: Not in my city!”

Montreal police have launched a probe into what they are calling a hate crime after residents of an apartment house found their cars damaged and death threats in envelopes with a bullet for each. The ethnicity and religion of the owners of the targeted vehicles was not released.

The incident, which occurred in the parking garage beneath an apartment building on Côte St. Luc Road, was clearly directed at the Jewish community, however — the neighborhood in which the incident took place is known as a “Jewish area.” The vandalism was discovered late Monday night when the smoke alarm in the garage suddenly activated.

Four of the vehicles were branded with swastikas, albeit painted backwards, sprayed in red paint on the hoods. Five of the cars “had envelopes on them, and on the white envelopes there were swastikas on them,” said a resident in the building who requested anonymity. CBC News agreed not to reveal his family name. “The swastikas were huge. They covered pretty much the majority of the hood,” he said. His neighbor’s car had a smashed windshield. On the ground in front of the car lay a hatchet.

“I’ve lived in Montreal my whole life… I’ve never seen this before first-hand, never been a victim of it and just to have it happen literally in your own home, it just left me speechless,” he told CBC Radio One.

One of the envelopes contained a bullet together with a threatening note, another resident told CBC News. Police collected the rest of the envelopes as evidence, before they were opened. “I’m just shocked. This is a hate crime and you never expect it to happen in your community,” the resident said.

“While the intent of the perpetrator cannot be absolutely determined at this time, given what is happening globally, the fact that swastikas are involved, that there were threatening notes and this is a Jewish area, leads one to understand that this was not just an act of simple vandalism but a crime targeting the Jewish community,” said Rabbi Reuben Poupko, chairman of the security committee of the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA).

Although police have not released all the details, Poupko told the Canadian Jewish News on Tuesday the notes were attached to all of the damaged vehicles. “They said something to the effect that ‘this bullet is for you,’ “ he told the paper.

The garage has no security surveillance cameras and there are no suspects, police said. Anyone with information is asked to call 514-393-1133.

In Berlin 2015, Jewish magazines are delivered in plain paper wrapping to minimize the chance of attack.

That’s the plain, unvarnished truth, according to the British-based The Guardian newspaper, quoting the Tagesspiegel, a Berlin newspaper.

The monthly magazine that serves the city’s Jewish community, the Jüdisches Berlin made the decision this year, according to spokesman Ilan Kiesling.

“We decided to do so despite the significant additional costs to reduce the likelihood of hostility towards our more than 10,000 community members,” Kiesling said.

The magazine is published by the Jewish Community of Berlin organization. Gideon Joffe, head of the group, wrote in the latest issue, “Israelis are beaten up in Berlin solely on the grounds that they are Israeli Jews. We are not yet – I repeat, yet – at the stage where Jews are being murdered in Germany just because they are Jews. But measures have to be taken to protect the democratic rule of law.”

According to Jewish Business News, there are an estimated 20,000 Israelis living in Germany. Jewish schools, community builds and cemeteries are guarded at present by police around the clock.

Last November, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told an international conference on anti-Semitism that “hatred of Jews’ was on the rise once more in his country.

The foreign minister said Germany’s Jews were being threatened and attacked at pro-Palestinian demonstrations. He added that the counter terrorism actions by Israel against Gaza could not be used to justify anti-Semitic behavior. Slogans like, ‘Gas the Jews!’ were also used during marches in the summer and a synagogue was firebombed in Wuppertal that had been burned down during Kristallnacht in 1938, but had since been rebuilt.

“Bold and brutal anti-Semitism has shown its ugly face again,” Steinmeier told the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) event.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany reported late last year that anti-Semitism in Germany is on the rise, as it is in other countries across Europe. Dieter Graumann, former president of the organization, said in an interview with BILD newspaper in November 2014, “For a while I noticed that anti-Semitism is becoming increasingly public and is no longer hidden.

“We often receive anti-Semitic messages sent according to name and address. Some people are no longer ashamed and no longer hide their hostility to Jews.

“We have seen… during the war in Gaza, demonstrations of pure, primitive hatred against the Jews that broke out again,” Graumann added. “It is very hard for me to talk about it but, when they are calls in the streets of Germany, ‘Jews to the gas,’ it hurts us greatly.”

In 1935, an anonymous Dutch photographer drove a motorcycle across Germany to document the sentiment about Jews. He was sent by Hans Richman and Alfred Viner, two Jews who escaped the country to the Netherlands, but hoped to expose the truth about the rising Nationalist-Socialist Party.

What they found was that Germany did not want its Jews – he photographed 22 signs along the way, all with one message: ‘Jews are not wanted here.’ Photos found along the sides of the road and at village entrances and in front of houses that today are in the National Archive in Jerusalem read, “Jews are not wanted here,” and “Jews, immigrate to your own country.”

The photos were distributed all over the world, including in Palestine, but did little good. Even the newspapers in Palestine did not print the photographs. Few others bothered.

People were used to seeing anti-Semitic slogans back then, in 1935.

They’re used to seeing them now, too. Even Israelis, unbelievably, who are stupid enough to actually move to the place where it all started just 70 years ago. What’s wrong with you??

The demand was refused and the letter was passed to the Interior Ministry of the State of North-Rhine-Westphalia, which is “looking at ways to legally ban the party,” whose numbers are growing, according to the Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism (CFCA).

A group of young Muslims organized a symbolic “ring of peace” to encircle the sole functioning synagogue in Oslo as Jew prayed within on Saturday.

At least 1,300 were inspired to join them in the initiative, which came in solidarity with Jews who were targeted last weekend by a radical Islamist terrorist in Denmark.

“This shows there are many more peacemakers than warmakers,” 37-year-old Zeeshan Abdullah, one of the organizers, told the crowd.

“There is still hope for humanity, for peace and love across religious differences and background,” he said.

Still, Norwegian sharp shooters were deployed on buildings around the synagogue. Police superintendent Steiner Hausvik told reporters, “It has been calm as we expected. We had no reason to expect any trouble but we were prepared.”

Jewish community spokesperson Ervin Kohn expressed gratitude and said it was “unique” that Muslims stood up “to this degree against anti-Semitism,” adding that “this fills us with hope, particularly as it’s a grassroots movement of young Muslims.”

Kohn advised the rest of the world to “look to Norway.”

There are only approximately 1,000 Jews left in Norway’s population of 5.3 million, while immigration of Muslims, about 3 percent of the population, continues to grow.

Last weekend two people died and five police officers were wounded in two attacks several hours apart by the same radical Islamist terrorist. The suspect, 22-year-old Omar el-Hussein, targeted a free speech event at a cafe and then a Bat Mitzvah at the Copenhagen Great Synagogue in Denmark.

Hussein, born in Denmark to Palestinian parents, had reportedly been released from jail only two weeks earlier after serving a two-year prison term for “grievous bodily harm.”

Former Israeli President Shimon Peres slapped Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu behind the back on Sunday for encouraging terrorized Jews to make Aliyah instead of doing so without being pushed by hatred.

Speaking in New York at an event by the Times of Israel newspaper, Peres insisted, “Jews can live all over the world. Just keep your children Jewish.”

The intermarriage rate in the United States is approximately 60 percent. It is above 70 percent in most of Europe, and Israel’s premier president of platitudes can’t connect the dots. The reason is that Peres refers never miss an opportunity to knock Netanyahu. even if at the expense of Aliyah.

The Prime Minister commented after this week’s murder of a Jewish guard at a Copenhagen synagogue, “I would like to tell all European Jews and all Jews wherever they are: Israel is the home of every Jew.”

Last month, at the funerals in Israel for French Jews murdered by a terrorist in an attack on kosher deli, in Paris, Netanyahu told mourners, ”Today we have a state of our own, one that is blossoming and advanced, one that spreads great light like a lighthouse of morality; a state that takes its fate in its hands.”

But Peres, instead of promoting Israel’s “lighthouse of morality” and encouraging people to have the desire to make Aliyah, preferred to exploit the event in New York to jab his long-time political enemy Netanyahu while broadcasting the old-time Israeli smugness that Israel does not have to ask anyone to come to the country.

“Come because you want to live in Israel,” Peres said, which would have been a reasonable statement if it weren’t for the fact that although Peres’ father and family were Zionists, no one made the move to Israel until anti-Semitism hastened their emigration from Europe..

Peres was born in White Russia and was ruled by Poland between the world wars. As anti-Semitic violence escalated, Peres’ father traveled to Tel Aviv in 1932 to put down stakes in Israel and then called for his family, including the future president of Israel, to make Aliyah in 1934. Those who remained behind were massacred by the Nazis.

(This abridged article by Ingrid Carlqvist and Lars Hedegaard appeared originally in complete form here on the Gatestone Institute website.)

If anyone had thought that the slaughter of four Jews in a Paris supermarket — for the reason that they were Jews — would have caused the Swedish mainstream press and the government to explain who is behind Europe’s growing anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence, he would be sadly mistaken.

With the exception of one television program, the connection between anti-Semitism, Islam and Muslim mass immigration remains a mental no-go area in Sweden.

Swedes now tend to view all immigrants as victims of totalitarianism, and most of the country has never realized that one minority group may expose another minority group to violence and intimidation.

They refuse to acknowledge that not all immigrants think like Swedes and cannot comprehend that people would flee if they were not hated and threatened.

Sweden’s history when it comes to Jews is not a pretty one. It was not until 1870 that Jews were permitted to settle wherever they wanted in the country. Sweden was behind the proposal to stamp a big “J” in the passports of German Jews, to prevent Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany from entering. And now the Swedish authorities close their eyes to the new Jew-hatred that is imported in the wake Muslim immigration.

Unfortunately, one of the worst offenders trying to hide the truth is a Jewish organization, the Swedish Committee against Anti-Semitism [SKMA]. What seems to have upset supporters of the SKMA was a comparison of them to the Organization of German Nationalist Jews, who in the 1930s supported Hitler and claimed that Jews were treated fairly in Nazi Germany.

In 1943, when it became clear that Hitler would lose the war, Sweden hurried to restore some of its reputation. In Nazi-occupied Denmark, about 8,000 Jews had escaped deportation to Nazi concentration camps because they were under the protection of the Danish government, and were never forced to wear the yellow Star of David.

But on August 23, 1943, all cooperation between the Danish government and the occupation authorities broke down. The government resigned and the Germans imposed a state of emergency.

The Danish resistance got wind that the Germans planned to round up all 8,000 Danish Jews in the night between October 1 and 2, 1943, to deport them to German camps. In no time, the resistance, with the aid of a great many civilians, managed to thwart the operation. Fishing boats were mobilized to smuggle more than 7,000 Jews to Sweden.

The Danish Jews and a number of Danish resistance fighters were housed in Swedish boarding houses, youth hostels, hotels and private homes.

After war’s end, most of the Jews in Sweden returned to Denmark, but Sweden’s self-image was forever changed. Finally, Sweden had something to be proud of after its highly dubious behavior at the time when it appeared that Hitler was on a winning streak.

Unfortunately, the Swedes drew an erroneous conclusion from their rescue of the Jews. Many Swedes are now firmly convinced that everyone seeking shelter in Sweden is in the same desperate predicament as the Jews were in 1943. One reason Swedes are more welcoming to asylum seekers than the inhabitants of most other European countries, is that they are distancing themselves from their despicable treatment of Jews before World War II, until 1943.

But this is precisely what has paved the way for a new Jew-hatred in Sweden. Swedes know nothing of the Jew-hatred in the Koran and the hadiths, so they just don’t understand why Muslims attack Jews. The Swedish media seldom write about the attacks, which Swedes will believe have something to do with the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.